Al Armendariz, the top Environmental Protection Agency official in the oil-rich Southwest region, resigned from his post, effective today. It's the latest twist in the never-ending and increasingly ugly fracking fracas.

While cold fusion remains a pipe dream, fusion as an energy source for the future continues to be funded and improved. 

In nuclear fission, current nuclear energy, the nucleus of an atom is split, but in fusion two lightweight atoms join together.  The biggest benefit is no explosion.

The ITER project is seeking to turn nuclear fusion into reality and is making use of the Tokamak reactor for this purpose. Reactors of this type and the plasma used in them to carry out fusion have a number of control problems, and to solve them, electronics engineer Goretti Sevillano has come up with some tools in her thesis defended at the University of the Basque Country.

Take a look at the photos from your last sun-soaked vacation: the morning light is warm and reddish while the midday sun is much hotter and blue.

Now compare that happy spectrum with the monochrome lights in your home or office, which are the same all day. No wonder you felt glum after you flew home. “Our biology is dependent on the variability of light through the day and through the seasons,” says Gary Allen, a lighting physicist at GE. “Artificial lighting is the same all day long.”

When people talk about an “all of the above” approach to energy they’re usually referring to the sources we know – gas, hydro, nuclear, solar and wind. But a steady stream of emerging alternatives promises to take advantage of natural processes to produce zero-carbon electricity for untold millions. The latest entrant in this sounds-too-good-to-be-true energy sweepstakes: pressure-retarded osmosis, a kind of reverse water desalination that kicks off energy instead of consuming it.

In a development that would be bad for the U.S. Department of Energy but good for solar power worldwide, a new process developed by scientists at the University of Cambridge has the potential to drive down the cost of manufacturing solar-grade silicon and boost use of photovoltaic devices.

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSC) are easier to manufacture than silicon-based solid-state photovoltaic cells but not as efficient. Some new research may make carbon nanotubes a more efficient alternative for platinum electrodes in dye-sensitized solar cells, making them more viable overall.

Global spending on cleaner energy grew to a record $263 billion in 2011, a 6.5 percent increase over the previous year, according to new research by The Pew Charitable Trusts. The United States reclaimed the top spot among all G-20 nations, thanks to $48 billion primarily in government subsidies, but with $45.5 billion in private investments, China is the real hub of clean energy activity - leading the world in wind energy investment and deployment, as well as wind and solar manufacturing. 

Mitigation, rationing, taxes. Environmental policy claims have historically been driven by negative thinking - a demand-side mindset that seeks to limit consumption of fossil fuels through pollution permits, greater expenses for consumers and multi-national climate change treaties. 

New research from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University suggests that encouraging the purchase of coal, oil and other dirty fossil fuel deposits could be a much better way to fight climate change.

A device the size of a home washing machine uses bacteria growing in municipal sewage to make electricity - and also clean up the sewage at the same time. 

Current wastewater treatment technology involves a number of steps designed to separate the solid and liquid components of sewage and clean the wastewater before it is released into a waterway. This often involves settling tanks, macerators that break down larger objects, membranes to filter particles, biological digestion steps and chemicals that kill harmful microbes. One estimate puts their energy use at 2 percent of overall consumption in the U.S.

We all want fewer dictators getting rich holding the world hostage to the demands of legacy energy systems.  And it can happen, though one anti-science contingent might not like how it gets done.

The hydrogen economy has been ready to start for decades and could begin commercial production of hydrogen in this decade - but, says Dr. Ibrahim Khamis of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria, it will take heat from existing nuclear plants to make hydrogen economical.